Peterson Lindsay M, Clifford Colin W G, Palmer Colin J
School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Australia.
School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, Australia.
Cognition. 2025 Oct;263:106222. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106222. Epub 2025 Jun 27.
When we look at a visual scene, salient features, such as a region of high contrast or a familiar object, attract our attention. Here, we examined how image saliency-based on computational models developed to predict human eye movements-influences how human observers expect the visual attention of others to be directed. We created animations in which a cone-shaped object (the agent) 'looks' at complex images displayed in a 3D scene. The agent's looking behaviour was controlled by eye movements recorded from human observers while looking at the same images as the agent or different images. Expectations about looking behaviour were assessed by asking participants (N = 24) to judge whether the agent's gaze was matched to the scene. We find that participants can detect a mismatch between the agent's looking behaviour and its visual environment, based on how the pattern of fixations displayed by the agent align with the visual content of the scene. Discrimination sensitivity was modulated by the overlap between the agent's gaze and salient image features: for example, participants struggled to identify a mismatch when the mismatched gaze aligned by chance with salient features of the displayed image. Further analysis suggests that participants are likely using a combination of low- through to high-level image features to determine the expected gaze behaviour of the agent. Our findings highlight that image saliency models are useful for understanding not only how a person engages with their environment but also their expectations for how others should interact with the environment.
当我们观察一个视觉场景时，显著特征，如高对比度区域或熟悉的物体，会吸引我们的注意力。在这里，我们研究了基于为预测人类眼球运动而开发的计算模型的图像显著性如何影响人类观察者对他人视觉注意力指向的预期。我们创建了动画，其中一个锥形物体（主体）“看向”三维场景中显示的复杂图像。主体的注视行为由人类观察者在观看与主体相同或不同图像时记录的眼球运动控制。通过要求参与者（N = 24）判断主体的注视是否与场景匹配来评估对注视行为的预期。我们发现，参与者可以根据主体显示的注视模式与场景视觉内容的匹配程度，检测到主体的注视行为与其视觉环境之间的不匹配。辨别敏感性受到主体注视与显著图像特征之间重叠的调节：例如，当不匹配的注视偶然与显示图像的显著特征对齐时，参与者难以识别不匹配。进一步的分析表明，参与者可能在使用从低到高的图像特征组合来确定主体的预期注视行为。我们的研究结果突出表明，图像显著性模型不仅有助于理解一个人如何与环境互动，还能理解他们对他人应如何与环境互动的期望。
